LUCASFILM INVESTS HEAVILY IN HP GEAR

The HP technology will be deployed at Lucasfilm's new Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio of San Francisco and at the company's Singapore operations.

"HP clearly understands the nature of the entertainment business, and the need to capitalize on and manage change," says Cliff Plumer, chief technology officer at Lucasfilm. "With this agreement we will continue expanding the quality of our entertainment offerings and meet the constantly rising expectations of consumers when it comes to movies and video games."

Lucasfilm will roll out up to 1,000 high-performance HP xw9300 workstations, powered by dual-core AMD Opteron processors and Nvidia dual PCI Express x16 graphics. The will run both Linux and Windows XP operating environments in 32-bit and 64-bit modes. The studio will use the systems for the production of visual effects and video games, as well as for rendering, compositing and editing.

In addition, HP Services is working closely with Lucasfilm to deploy a storage environment to securely store and archive critical business information. Lucasfilm selected the latest HP StorageWorks offerings for its business applications and Cisco's MDS 9509 providing a total of 35 terabytes of capacity.